Virginia Hamilton Page 6

  Through the din, Levi had to smile. He caught Tom-Tom’s eye, and identical smug grins flowed between them.

  The comical drumming had been a lead-in, something Levi had recognized the moment the boys began slithering on the ground. The thunderous sound of kettledrums ceased abruptly, as somehow he’d known they would. Such an immense, sudden absence of noise froze the boys in twisted poses.

  “Youuuu snakes-in-the-grass!” Thomas screeched at them.

  Shocked, they sat up, looking like a bunch of babies wakened from sleep. Then, again alert, they settled into their semicircle. All eyes watched Tom-Tom.

  The drums rolled softly. “Well, I ain’t no snake charmer,” he told them. “I’m the Major Drummer and I lead the parade. Except we ain’t going on any march.

  “And you guys won’t be some little snakes in the grass,” he said.

  The drums sounded deeply, but as if from a great distance: “The Great Snake Race is my snake race … ,” Thomas chanted.

  A staccato beat began on one drum: “Is my great race. …”On the other drum, a long, resounding roll: “Is a race for snakes. …”

  Both drums rolling. Smooth, like the sound of rivers: “The Great Snake Race won’t be just snatching snakes.

  “Y’all have to hold them.” (Boom-pah!)

  “You got to sack ’em and keep ’em in.” (Pom-pa-pom/POM-PA-POM!)

  “Cause snakes can get out-a most anything.” (A-ret-te-tet-tee!)

  “They can get out-a hand.” (A-rolica-rolica/ Pom-pa-POM-POM!)

  Justice watched Levi. With eyes shining at his brother, he wore a strange grin. It was Thomas’ smirk stretched across his face.

  A long drumroll echoed through the trees and sundown. They all did glance to westward, where the osage trees of the Douglass property twisted black and were backlighted by a spectacular red sun going down. It didn’t look real to them, that bloodred sun, and it didn’t look painted. It looked as if it would burn down the horizon. It would sear out a trench and come sliding all the way back to them.

  Sure, Justice thought. Red sun at night is a sailor’s delight.

  They none of them knew much about sailors. But she guessed that the rhyme she’d heard somewhere would hold true for The Great Snake Race. It meant that tomorrow would bring another day of hot, cloudless weather. And if Thursday was going to be fine, then Friday had a good chance of being the same.

  Drums sounded a steady but soft pom-pom/ pom-pom.

  “Any you guys ever catch some snakes?” Thomas said, his voice pitched just loud enough to be heard.

  Boys looked at one another. They were uncertain whether to say anything, for fear Tom-Tom would produce a snake and make them snatch it.

  A boy spoke timidly. “I did, once.”

  “I buried one once,” said a kid named Slick Peru. “But I didn’t catch it. It were already dead.”

  Boys snickered.

  “I caught a water moccasin once,” Talley Williams said. Sitting in front, he was a plump, friendly boy and had come on time.

  “No, you didn’t,” Tom-Tom told him through the pom-pom beat. “You might think you caught one. But nobody in they right mind go catching water moccasins.”

  “Because they venoms,” Dorian Jefferson said.

  “Cause they’re venomous,” Tom-Tom corrected him. “Poisonous,” he added. “And if you see anything out there Friday that don’t look like a garter snake”—Pom/pom/pom—”you walk away from it.”

  You mean, there are poisonous snakes out there? Justice thought.

  “I’ll kill anything that’s not a garter,” Dorian said. “I’ll grind ’em in the ground!”

  “No, you won’t!” Tom-Tom yelled at him. The drumming ceased. “An-an-anybody st-starting in-killing … snakes-for-sp … sp … sport-is …

  “… disqualified,” Levi finished for him.

  “Yeah, annn-dh c-c-caaan’t never be …”

  “… in The Great Snake Race,” Levi finished again.

  “I thought it was a water moccasin,” Talley Williams said. “It was whipping through the water.”

  Water moccasins! And I fooled around out there! Justice thought.

  Thomas’ sticks made a blur as a delicate rolling sound began.

  “That’s another thing,” he said easily. “You don’t catch nothing is in the water. Stay out of the water. The Quinella Trace has a mess a leeches in it.

  Thomas stared pointedly at Levi. Pom-ah/pom-ah sounding from the drums in a whisper.

  Justice felt a chill crawl over her. It hurt her so deep inside to see Levi hang his head.

  “I told you about the leeches before,” Thomas was saying to the boys.

  “My dad says there ain’t a leech in that water,” Dorian said.

  “Sure, your dad knows a lot,” Thomas said. “I mean”—Pom/pom/pom—“between yelling his head off at the Little League”—laughter from the boys—“and throwing a fit ’cause the car won’t start”—Pum-pa-pom—“when does he have any time for fishing at the Quinella—huh?”

  Boys whooped, “Ooh, cold on Dorian!”

  “He say he going move on out of here, too—my daddy,” Dorian said when they had quieted. He turned away from them.

  “Going to move what from where?” Tom-Tom said, brimming with impatience. Only his hands moved.

  “Going to move Mom and me and him. And pretty soon, too,” Dorian said. “Say he don’t like the feeling of this place.”

  “He just talking,” Slick Peru said. But he glanced uncertainly at Tom-Tom.

  “Y’all be here forever,” another told him.

  Tears welled in Dorian’s eyes. They were tears of anger and gratitude, tears which Levi saw him blink away.

  “My daddy says … ,” Dorian went on unsteadily, “… says can’t even Jesus save all you Douglasses.” He wrapped his arms around to cover his head.

  “Why he has to pick on us all the time!” Thomas said, to no one in particular. He did give a glance at Levi, and Levi gave him back a look of warning to take it easy.

  “My daddy says this field oughtn’t be y’all’s,” Dorian said. “Says to make it a baseball diamond for everybody, too.”

  “Sure, so he won’t have to spend a nickel for gas getting over to his Little League,” Thomas couldn’t help saying. But he left off. His drums ceased. He was silent a moment, staring at the boy.

  He’s lying. He’s making the whole thing up, Justice thought vaguely about Dorian, she didn’t know why. Dorian never had lunch money, was the next thing she thought about. In school, kids give him nickels and dimes, or they gave him part of their own lunches. When the Jeffersons first arrived last year, this happened about once a month. By the end of this year, it was happening most every day and kids resented it. It wasn’t as if his parents couldn’t afford to buy his lunch. It was as though his mom, especially, wanted him to hustle it from the kids.

  “Dorian,” Thomas said, drumming the instant he spoke the name. “Just don’t mention to your dad about the race for snakes, hear? And don’t any the rest of you say anything about it, either.”

  “Man, maybe Dorian shouldn’t even be in on it, too,” Talley Williams said.

  Dorian leaped to his feet in a second in an exaggerated fighting stance.

  “Don’t get yourself all upset,” Thomas told him. He played a soothing beat until Dorian had settled down again. “He gets to be in it like everybody else,” Thomas told Talley. “But get out a line and you are out, Dorian, understand? That goes for the rest of you guys, too.

  “Now.” Thomas looked them over and then all around. His drums seemed to pause.

  Shade covered the entire field. Dogs could be heard barking for nothing, announcing their progress through town. Cars were sounding along Dayton Street. Over in the park, the Little League practice must have been coming to an end. There was a suspended stillness from that far away, punctuated every once in a while with a yell. The high wind had breezed itself out and the line of ancient osage orange trees was still.


  Boys leaned forward toward Thomas. Justice had worked her way up to a point next to him and slightly behind. No boy paid any attention to her.

  “C-c-caaatching snakes-won’t-be … nuh-nuh-near theee whole-thing youuu got-to-do on Fr-frriday,” Thomas told them. The sticks he’d been holding still began a beat and he spoke smoothly. “You got to sack them and bike ’em back here.”

  Wide-eyed, the boys turned and stared at one another.

  “We get them back here and string ’em in the trees.” He pointed to the twisted osage. “Until Saturday and the countdown.”

  “Whaaa?” Boys began to holler. “You going to make us hang snakes in the trees?”

  Thomas spoke carefully with the drums rolling softly. “I said, we going to hang the sacks of snakes in the trees. Back in there where the leaves are thickest, in on the low branches where no one will notice. See, the branches grow across-ways, looking for sunlight. If you can’t listen no better than that, y’all ought to quit now while you ahead.”

  “The sacks of them!”

  “I thought he mean—”

  “Try not to think,” Thomas scolded them. “Leave the thinking to the Major Drummer!”

  He let the kettles roar. Sound hit the boys like a sudden front of thunderous weather.

  “Yeoow!” Boys fell back as if wind had knocked them over.

  “Okay, you guys,” Thomas said, silencing the drums. He stood at attention before the boys until they had again settled back. The drums commenced to hum seemingly of their own accord.

  “See,” he told them, “snakes can get loose of most anything, except a sack you can draw real tight-closed at the top. But that kind of drawsack—you know, like you keep trunks and towels in for the town pool—that kind of sack has to be made of stuff that’ll let the snakes breathe free air through. Easier for you is to have one of the big plastic peanut-butter containers. With the handles and the lids.” He studied each one of the boys to make certain they understood.

  “You punch little holes in the lids,” he told them, “and hang the containers up by the handles. See if you got any. Most folks have ’em.”

  He waited a moment before continuing; but the humming drums did not cease. “It’s just for one night,” he told them. “Part of The Great Snake Race, of which I am the sole inventor, is to find out if you guys can keep them snakes overnight and keep a secret, too. Because you have to have the snakes on Saturday. Alive. And no mom or dad to know, either.

  “No wounded snakes and no dead snakes count for The Great Snake Race on Saturday,” Thomas finished finally.

  “But I thought—” Justice spoke before she realized. She’d been listening closely to Thomas. Now Levi gave her a look to shush her.

  She whispered to him, “I thought it was going to be just on Friday.”

  “Friday and Saturday. You’re not supposed to talk,” he whispered back.

  It annoyed her that he, too, followed along, giving Thomas the right to say who could talk and when.

  Next thing, he’ll be telling us when to breathe.

  But she stayed quiet, for The Great Snake Race began to loom large, like the small patch of gray on a horizon that built into a summer storm.

  Two days! she thought. Keep the snakes caged and keep them alive! I bet the biggest is the best for staying curled up in a sack. And best for racing.

  She didn’t dare think what it would be like to catch and handle a large snake. Even the skinny snake she’d handled had had strength which surprised her.

  Get it in a sack fast as you can and bring it on home.

  There was quiet. Stillness rushed them in the absence of drumming. Thomas spoke eagerly: “Fr-frriday, tuh-ten o’clock. Weee meet-at thee Quinella Trace.” Words popping and bursting. “You-you youuuu got-as muh-muuch time as you-you neeed tooo catch ’em, but … buuuut don’t tuh-tuh-tuh-ake forever!”

  “Better make a limit,” Levi told him; then, quietly, in the same voice as Thomas’: “You’ve forgotten to drum.”

  “O-oh,” Thomas said, in Levi’s voice.

  His hands moved, not with any kind of speed that Justice could see. All the same, the drumsticks became a blur. And sound, like a mystery in a minor key, rose and fell and echoed all around them.

  “Two hours is the limit of time to hunt the snakes,” Thomas said easily. “Then bring ’em back and string ’em up.” Softly, the drums rolled. “You can leave ’em over there in the trees until Saturday morning, early.”

  “How early?” someone asked him.

  “While your folks still be sleeping,” he said. “Six-thirty.”

  “Aw, Tom-Tom, too early, man,” said Slick. “Saturday, my mom is asleep even by nine-thirty.”

  “Then you got it made,” Thomas told him.

  “Yeah, but then I can’t sleep late,” Slick said.

  “My dad sleeps all day,” Dorian said eagerly. He looked happy, all thought of tears gone now. “But my mom’s around. Don’t know what-all time she starts up.” They knew his mom wouldn’t pay any attention to his going.

  Wonder how she’s feeling, thought Justice.

  Other boys were moaning, “Why so early?”

  Thomas gave them a blast of the kettles. He flicked hand screws, changing tones to unearthly, magnificent sound.

  The boys quieted. Without their having noticed, a thin mist had gathered over the field. It rose from the ground like shadow.

  “Y’all have to be such babies!” Thomas said. “You be up here by six-thirty and you come quiet!”

  What Tom-Tom hadn’t told them, but what Levi knew, was that they dare not wake their own parents on Saturday. They mustn’t let them know about the snake race. Levi was certain that his mom, especially, wouldn’t take kindly to pails and sacks of snakes hanging in the trees.

  “He’ll do it every time,” he said to himself about Tom-Tom. Hope nothing goes wrong.

  Drumming, Thomas told them: “You have all day tomorrow to find some of them plastic pails.

  Don’t anybody come in here on Friday without one or a good drawsack.”

  “We got this yellow big pail with a handle at home,” Dorian said. “Only, it’s about halfway full of peanut butter.”

  The boys laughed at him.

  “Empty,” Thomas said. “Halfway empty of peanut butter.” He beat one drum absently.

  “Yeah,” Dorian said, “I can scoop up the peanut butter and make it in a ball with two hands. And … and hide it in the freezer!”

  “Don’t fool around!” Thomas told him, with the boys snickering.

  “I’m not fooling,” Dorian said.

  Why is he acting stupid? Justice wondered.

  “Dorian,” Thomas said, “you do something dumb, like hiding peanut-butter balls, and your mom or dad’ll find out what we’re doing for sure.”

  “Oh. Well,” Dorian said, “I’ll eat it all up tonight.”

  “Man—Dorian, you just come on Friday. I’ll have a pail for you.” Thomas gave a glance to Levi to see if this would be all right.

  Levi didn’t make a move that Justice could see. But with his eyes he gave agreement to Thomas. She knew that if one of her brothers was to fix up a pail for Dorian, it wouldn’t be Thomas. Thomas never fixed up anything, or took care of anything, except his drums. Levi even made Thomas’ bed and cleaned up their room. And that made Justice mad. There wasn’t a soul to help her out with keeping her room straight.

  Expect me to pick up everything myself, she thought. And make the bed … hang up all my clothes …

  Not many months ago, her mom had made her bed each morning, and picked up the mess of her room. Justice had had clean, ironed clothes every day. Now all had changed. She suspected that nothing would ever be the same.

  I don’t like it here, she thought. Why don’t I go around to sit awhile with Mom and Dad?

  She knew why. She never could pull herself away when the boys were gathered. She could not help herself, for, like a moth, she was captured by their light.

&n
bsp; A POM sounded on one kettledrum and a Pom again on the other, a third tone higher than the first. The beat swelled in drumrolls huge and deep. So massive a sound surrounded them that Justice believed it must have lifted Levi to his feet, as it had some of the other boys. It was a sound of such strength it had to have brought the twilight. While she could see Levi, the features of his face seemed to have run together. Just as if a cloth had wiped away his eyes, nose and mouth. Glad she was that sunlight had vanished. Tomorrow would come that much sooner, and so, on to Friday.

  Justice looked around the field at the boys, who were also featureless. She saw again the great cottonwood tree on the east boundary.

  Cottonwoman, so silent.

  She’d caught hold of the darkening and was arranging it around her.

  Thomas was a shadow hunched over two dark pools. Sound rolled and resounded from the kettles. It floated the boys by twos down the field, through a wispy film of mist. The boys drifted away.

  Wait!

  They had no bodies.

  How do you race the snakes?

  Justice could pick out heads of boys like bobbing balloons. But she couldn’t tell which head was which.

  The field emptied, except for the three of them. Musky odor of perspiration mixed with the scent of grass on the heat of night. Wordlessly, her brothers prepared to leave. They pulled a dolly from beneath an osage. The low truck was homemade, with wheels they had scrounged. They picked up drop cloths to cover the kettledrums. Then they placed the drums on the dolly.

  She held the gate wide open for them as they strained to handle the dolly through. And surprised she was to see porch lights on at the house. Justice thought how sweet the lights looked, of safety, as her brothers struggled up the backyard.

  She took a last look at the field. Nothing much to see but night coming quickly on. A field of grass darkening. When she was older, she would take a turn mowing it—she would make them let her. Osage trees were one mass. Houses down there—Dorian’s, the Stevenson place next to his—were all of them lighted. She felt warm. The night had stayed hot.

  When is it gonna cool?

  She had a jumble of thoughts. Who would’ve thought the Pickle and Cream Gang was here minutes ago?